Firm pays $54M for Cherry Creek office, retail buildings

A real estate firm based in the St. Louis area that established a Denver office last year has chosen Cherry Creek for its first purchase in the Mile High City.

Altus Properties paid $ 54 million on Thursday for the 1.4-acre parcel at the corner of Second Avenue and Josephine Street in the Cherry Creek neighborhood, according to public records.

Altus financed the purchase with a $32 million loan from United of Omaha Life Insurance Co., records show.

The parcel takes up half a city block and has four buildings on it, according to the website of Seattle-based Unico Properties, which sold the site to Altus.

• 2401 E. Second Ave. is a sixstory office building with a garden level, constructed in 1965 and renovated in the late 1990s.

• 220 Josephine St. is a twostory retail and office building constructed in 2002.

• 201 Columbine St. is a threestory retail and office building constructed in 2002. The company behind STK Steakhouse and Kona Grill plans to open a seafood restaurant in part of the building.

• 2415 E. Second Ave. is a single-story retail building facing Second Avenue constructed in 2004. It is currently home to

Mason’s Famous Lobster Rolls, and before that was leased to Ink Coffee.

Altus didn’t respond to requests for comment on Friday. The company announced in April 2022 that it was opening a Denver office, targeting office, industrial, multifamily and retail assets with deal sizes between $10 million and $100 million.

Altus generally owns properties in the Kansas City, St. Louis and Minneapolis markets, according to its website. The company said last April that it had recently purchased its first holding in Colorado: a 28,000-square-foot retail center in Colorado Springs.

Unico purchased the Cherry Creek property for $42 million in 2015. In 2019, Goldman Sachs bought an unspecified stake in it and other Unico real estate holdings in Denver. That transaction valued the Cherry Creek property at $40 million, records show.

The buildings were about 60% leased in 2015, a Unico executive told Businessden at the time. That figure had increased to 87% at the time of the Goldman Sachs deal, according to a news release at the time.

Earlier this year, Unico and Goldman sold a row of buildings along Platte Street in Lohi to Larimer Square owner Asana Partners.